The Listening Post

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The Listening Post is a community media project that aims to start a conversation about local news in New Orleans. Every week on our radio segment we talk about issues ranging from healthcare to WhoDat, tattoos to transportation.

Listeners can both contribute thoughts and commentary about important issues in their neighborhoods, and also receive important local news and information.

How does it work?

There are two ways to participate in the Listening Post project.

1. We have a Listening Post recording device at Norman Mayer Library in Gentilly where you can answer our questions of the week. Questions solicit opinions about jobs, housing, health care, safety, development and other essential topics. We listen to the recorded answers every week, and share some of the best answers on the radio.

2. We have created a text messaging service that also seeks to connect with local voices by asking questions and sharing information on a weekly basis. Every week we send out a text message survey about a local news issue, and then share the results on the radio. If you would like to participate in our surveys and receive important local news bulletins, text the word "hello" to the Listening Post phone number: (504) 303-4348.

News and information is an essential resource, just like food, housing, and water. The Listening Post is a project that seeks to meet people in person, in their own neighborhoods, and invite them to both consume and contribute information about important issues happening in New Orleans. Our goal is to listen to people and help them get informed about things that matter most in the city.

A few months ago a housing notice went up on the local Craigslist page with the provocative headline: "3 bedroom, 900 square feet, God Damn, Someone Get Me Out Of New Orleans." The author went on to write: "Once the city was built for people like me, times change, now it's built for you."

This sentiment, that New Orleans is no longer affordable to longtime residents, has been getting louder lately.

Since it's Jazz Fest season, our Listening Post Questions of the Week are focusing on music and heritage in New Orleans. We asked: what music was playing in your home growing up? And...if you could pick one song to represent you, what would it be?

The Listening Post is back collecting thoughts and experiences from communities around New Orleans on a new series of issues. The past month we’ve been collaborating with Independent radio producer Eve Abrams and her Unprisoned project.

The Listening Post is teaming up with the Unprisoned project, a new media initiative by award winning independent radio producer Eve Abrams. We want to understand better how jails and prisons impact society here in Louisiana, where 1 in 75 residents are incarcerated, the highest rate in the world.

A recent Pew Research Center report highlighted the fact that the United States is no longer a majority middle income country. We here at the Listening Post thought dropping this report during the holiday season made for some interesting questions.

So, we’re asking folks around New Orleans both how they’re feeling about their place on the economic scale, and how that impacts their gift buying this December.